


The mileage on my speeding heart

by heavenisalibrary



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The TARDIS translation matrix was written into her DNA, something she could toggle on and off and look through like a mental dictionary. For the Doctor and his friends, things were just automatically comprehensible. But translating manually, well. The Doctor wasn’t terribly good at that.</p><p>River was. It drove him mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Four times the Doctor and River disagreed over a translation, and one time they didn't.

They had a day planned. A whole day at a carnival or a festival or a fair or — well, really, the TARDIS’s translation matrix struggled a bit to put it into English for Clara, which made the Doctor a bit cross and River more than a little amused at how cross he was. She had a lengthy list of degrees and qualifications and years of study in addition to her frankly gobsmackingly high IQ that enabled her to speak an absurd amount of languages with at least passable fluency. The ones she didn’t speak, the TARDIS filled in for her, but it wasn’t the same as it was with the Doctor and his companions — River was part of the TARDIS. The TARDIS translation matrix was written into her DNA, something she could toggle on and off and look through like a mental dictionary. For the Doctor and his friends, things were just automatically comprehensible. But translating manually, well. The Doctor wasn’t terribly good at that. 

River was. It drove him mad.

“It’s more like a block party,” River said, trying not to smirk at him as she glanced up briefly from the scanner. 

“A _block party_?” he repeated, snorting derisively.

River rolled her eyes. “Bunch of people who live in the same block — in this case, same tree — getting together to cook, play games, and get to know one another. It’s a block party, sweetie.”

“It’s — it’s —” he cut off, looking at River helplessly and then wheeling to face Clara, his gesticulations wild. “It’s the biggest shindig of the century! Every tree on the forest planet, lit up like it’s Christmas, thousands of food stands lining the branches and more games than you could ever play and _millions_ of people mill about the canopies, laughing and eating! It’s the biggest celebration in this solar system’s _history_! It’s the biggest party held entirely in trees in the _universe_!”

“Yes,” River said, stepping back from the scanner and crossing her arms over her chest. She loved how Clara was so quick to look to her and away from the Doctor’s lurid explanations. The Doctor hated it. “It’s a _block party_.”

The Doctor groaned, turning around to face River with a glare, but she just fluffed her hair and shrugged, turning away from him to begin inputting the coordinates.

“Spoilsport,” he murmured over her shoulder as he came to stand behind her, reaching over her to reach a lever.

“Drama queen,” River shot back. 

He huffed again, and Clara’s laugh sounded behind them.

“I love traveling with your wife, Doctor,” Clara said. “It’s like watching tennis.”

“It’s not tennis,” the Doctor said, and River didn’t miss the way he leaned even closer to her before he pulled away, fiddling unnecessarily with another part of the console as she did all of the actual work. “It’s _bickering._ She won’t let me be right about anything!”

“Well if you’d have the decency to actually _be_ right every once in a while, honey, I wouldn't have to _let_ you do anything,” River said.

The Doctor stepped back, gesturing broadly at River and looking at Clara helplessly. “See what I mean?!”

“Yep,” said Clara, nodding. She shot River a smirk, which River gladly returned. “Fifteen, love: Professor Song. Your serve, Doctor.”

The Doctor was so profoundly irritated that he didn’t utter a single comprehensible word, just spluttered and pulled at his clothes and tugged at his hair, red-faced.

“It’s not fair,” he said after a pause, stomping over to River, who looked up at him with raised brows. He wagged his finger in her face. “You’re _everybody’s_ favorite. You can’t be Clara’s favorite too. I reserve the rights to have _my_ companions like _me_ best!”

The TARDIS groaned and River groaned along with her.

“Do you _hear_ yourself!?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, tugging at his bowtie. “And I sound like I’ve barely passed my bicentennial, but now I’ve gone and said it and I’ve got to stick by it. What if I write up a contract?”

“I’m not signing anything,” Clara said.

“Nor am I,” River said, “now would you fret in silence for the rest of the ride, hm?”

River flicked the last lever to send the TARDIS out of the vortex and to the block party to punctuate her statement, but the Doctor barely had time to open his mouth and respond before the TARDIS gave a horrible groan — not at all like the one she was supposed to make — and River, the Doctor, and Clara were all jolted to the side as she stopped short.

“HA!” the Doctor shouted instantly, pointing a finger at River. “She _doesn’t_ like you best!”

“I think we have bigger problems,” Clara said. 

“Yes,” River agreed, “and don’t be ridiculous. Of course she likes me best.”


	2. Chapter 2

River wasn’t prone to anxious tics and twitches the way he was. He couldn’t go ten minutes in this body without pulling at his clothes or yanking a hand through his frankly ridiculous hair. Something about this regeneration was so _fidgety_ — in so many ways he knew himself to be restrained, but there was a buzzing, restless physicality to this body that he couldn’t overcome. Which made it particularly satisfying to see his ever-composed wife making her hair positively enormous with how she kept running her hands through it. Every time she did it, hunched over her desk in the library, he swore each individual curl doubled.

She was poring over three or four books at a time, leaning over the desk as her eyes jumped from page to page in the span of a few seconds before she flipped to the next one in each tome. River never really needed to study, he knew — if not only because she regularly reminded him of that every time he tried to stop her from extending one of their trips so she could get to her school work — but she did love to learn, and even if she remembered almost everything she read, she still needed to _read_ it. He had a sneaking suspicion that she was exaggerating at least slightly when she said she didn’t need to prepare at all for class; River had far too many control issues to walk into a classroom without ensuring she was by far the most knowledgable first.

“Need a study buddy?” he asked, stepping out of the aisle he’d been lurking in and clapping his hands together with a grin as he approached her. 

She looked up, offered him a quick smile, and shook her head. “Hello, sweetie.”

He plopped down with a little more flair than was strictly necessary in the seat across from her, loudly scooching it down the table until he was beside her, his knee bumping hers as he bounced his leg.

“What’re you stressing over?”

She huffed, her hair blowing from her face on her loud exhale. “Nothing.”

“Liar,” he said.

“Rule one,” she said.

“You’re not the Doctor,” he said.

“No, but I am _a_ Doctor,” River said. “Or will be. And anyway, who says you get a monopoly on lying?”

He rolled his eyes, leaning over to read from the book she was currently glancing over, a look of frustration drawing her brows together. 

“Hardly a difficult text,” he said.

“No,” she agreed, “but there’s a word I can’t quite translate. At least not accurately. I want to say it’s like — like wanderlust, but it’s different than that, deeper and wider and with a darker connotation. We haven’t a word like that in English.”

“Well there’s a word in 28th century Ara —”

“No, no,” she said. “That’s not right either.”

“What about —”

River snorted. “Honestly, honey, you’re very helpful with many things but translations are not one of them.”

He frowned, leaning back from her and crossing his arms over his chest petulantly. “That’s not true.”

“It is too,” she said, “you’re rubbish with languages.”

He glared at her, and the only acknowledgment she gave that she noticed was the slight upturn to the corner of her mouth as she continued flipping through books, chewing on the end of a pencil. After a moment he leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.

“What’s that?” she said, finally looking away from her books to squint at him.

“Gallifreyan,” he said.

“Mm,” she said. “Lovely. I will admit, your vocabulary far outstrips mine.”

“It’d better,” the Doctor said, “it’s my native language.”

“Yes, well, that doesn’t help your total inability to structure a sentence.”

“Shut up,” he said. Then, “how’s that translation?”

River leaned forward to kiss him, and he forgot that he was trying to impress her with his mastery of languages for a while. Her lips were slow and soft against his, the eraser of her pencil digging slightly uncomfortably into his cheek as she unthinkingly reached her hand up to brush against his jaw, and he smiled stupidly at her when they pulled apart.

“It’s absolutely awful. Not remotely what I was looking for, not to mention the fact that Gallifreyan is a functionally useless language unless I’m writing or speaking solely to you but thank you for trying, honey, I appreciate the sentiment,” River said.

“You’re impossible to please,” he said with a sigh.

“Not _remotely_ true,” River said, “and I’m even willing to take a break from my studies to give you some helpful pointers.”

He forgot all about translations after that.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor gave a funny little salute to the audience before tucking backstage, positively buzzing with enthusiasm. He’d agreed to give a talk at one of River’s dreadful conventions, in part because he loved to show off, and in part because it meant he got to spend one of the weeks she usually barred him from seeing her _with_ her, which he was embarrassingly keen to take her up on. 

“Well?” he said. “How was I?”

River cleared her throat. “They certainly won’t forget that.”

“That good, eh?” He preened a bit. River bit her lip.

“Sweetie,” she said, reaching up to straighten his bow tie for him. “How closely exactly did you look at those translations?”

“Close enough,” he said, shrugging her off. Her reluctance to praise him was frustrating, and he pressed past her and into the corridor as she hurried to keep pace. They were meant to go to a meet and greet afterward with other academics, and he didn’t want to be late. Also, she was making him _nervous_. After a moment of thinking he might let it drop, he sighed and turned to face her. “Why do you ask?”

“And did you actually, properly translate them?” River said.  
He spluttered. “Of _course_ I did! How would I have read them otherwise?”

“No,” River said, shaking her head. “I mean did _you_ translate them, or did you rely on the translation matrix?”

He huffed. “You know I — I can’t — I don’t — well of course I used the sodding translation matrix, River, I always do.”

River covered her mouth to stifle a laugh, and he narrowed his eyes. It was an oft mentioned — by _her_ — inequality of their relationship that without the help of his ship, he had a barely useful comprehension of most languages. Once she’d turned the translation matrix off altogether and watched him struggle to speak to her parents, talking with an _absurd_ accent for nearly an hour before he’d finally realized what she done — but the TARDIS translation matrix was the best in the galaxy, bar none. It just wasn’t fair that it was hardwired into River’s DNA.

“You should’ve done it manually,” River said.

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, _sweetie_ ,” River said with a grin. “The particular subsect of Yaulawkins who wrote that had a solely written dialect that deviated from the accepted alphabet — they used symbols to denote the tone of their writings — and you missed a very important one…”

The Doctor paled, quickly withdrawing the finger he’d been about to wag in her face in reproach. “So that five page passage I read, the rude jokes…”

“Weren’t jokes,” River said with a nod, “there was a mark at the beginning indicating it was serious. It was five pages of explicit pornography from the queen’s personal collection.”

The Doctor stepped back from her and leaned against the wall behind him for support, swallowing. “I just read five pages of _smut_ at an intergalactic academic conference.”

River waved a hand. “I’ve done that a time or three myself.”

“Yes but you’re _you_ — I’m — I’m the _Doctor_ —”

“And I’m an _actual_ doctor with qualifications I didn’t use psychic paper to prove,” River said, “so maybe you should defer to my expertise every now and then.”

“We can’t possibly go to that meet and greet now,” the Doctor said, tugging a hand through his hair.

“Of course we can,” River said, “in fact, I insist. Maybe you’ll remember this moment next time the idea that you know everything pops into your head and it’ll humble you.”

“Right,” the Doctor said, “no, I don’t think it will.”

River rolled her eyes. “Nor do I, but at the very least I want the memory of you trying to have academic discussions about porn seared into my memory forever and after all of the horrible situations you’ve roped me into, you owe me this.”

“I do not!”

 

“You do,” River said, “or you can sleep on the couch tonight.”

“I can sleep on the TARDIS.”

“As though she’d let you in if I didn’t want her to.”

The Doctor huffed again, angrily straightening his coat as he started walking again. “Fine. We’ll go. But for the record, the TARDIS would certainly let me in.”

“Sure she would, sweetie.”


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s addressed to _me_ ,” the Doctor said, snatching the letter out of River’s hands. It was handwritten and poorly and it was only the Doctor and River on the TARDIS, so the old girl wasn’t nearly so keen to translate. And though the Doctor would never admit it, it was probably out of deference to River, who did love to watch him struggle.

River snatched it back and started to walk away. “It’s _not_. I see why you’d think that, but it clearly says —”

“‘To the Doctor and Significant Other,’” he read, grabbing it back and holding it over his head. He knew that River could incapacitate him with a pinky finger if she wanted to, but there was something childishly satisfying about watching her lean up to grab it on her tip-toes briefly before dropping back down to cross her arms with a roll of her eyes.

“Yes,” River said, “and _I’m_ the Doctor in this relationship.”

“It would say _Doctor Song_ then, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” River said, “there are some places and people who just call me Doctor. It’s simpler.”

“Then it would say to _doctor_ , not _the_ Doctor — the definite article, River —”

“Is functionally useless in this language and you know it,” she said, “it’s not even really an article, you’re just translating poorly. 

The Doctor grumbled under his breath, dropping his arm to look at the front of the envelope again. “Significant other could be either of us,” he said with a sigh, “at most it indicates someone knows us well enough to know that husband or wife might not be right, depending on the time streams.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” River said, raising her brow. “Are you going to be a woman one day? Not as I mind…”

“Could be,” he said, “you never know. Or you could be a man. Or there are other options. What century were you born in, anyway, talking in binaries like that —”

“Oh, hush,” River said waving her hand, “you’re right, but don’t get high and mighty about my rubbish translations when yours are worse. Anyway, I’m a little short on regenerations —”

 

“I will _give them back_ —”

“You won’t,” River said, holding up a hand to cut him off, “but this still doesn’t solve the problem.”

“I still think it’s addressed to me,” he said, straightening his jacket. “I’m the Doctor.”

“You’re not the only one with a reputation,” River said, “but does it even matter? It’s addressed to both of us, really, unless you’ve got some other wife locked away in one of these rooms.”

“As if the old girl would allow it,” he said, and off River’s frown, immediately added, “not that I’d _want_ to, I’m just saying!”

“Mhm,” she said, “give it here.”

She grabbed the envelope from him and tore it open. They spent an hour poring over the invitation and arguing about the proper pronouns and articles and everything else until they finally just decided to accept the invitation and go to the party.

(They were interrupted by a murder mystery they needed to solve four minutes in and never actually figured out who was invited to the party in the first place.)


End file.
